Nick Montana Era Gets Off to Solid Start at Tulane
By Jack Crosby
Aug 29, 2013; New Orleans, LA, USA; Tulane Green Wave quarterback Nick Montana (11) during the first half against the Jackson State Tigers at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
Thursday night, the Tulane Green Wave took the field in their 2013 opener against Jackson State. Beginning what will be their final season in Conference USA before heading off to the American Athletic Conference next season, Tulane had a bit of starpower at the QB position in the form of Nick Montana–yes, THAT Montana.
The son of former NFL, 49ers and Chiefs QB legend Joe Montana made his first FBS start last night in a 34-7 win over Jackson State of the FCS.
Coming out of high school, Montana was recruited to play football for the Washington Huskies, however he would end up transferring and spending some time at the JUCO level before settling on Tulane as the place where he’d like to begin a fresh start.
Putting famous family lineage to the side and focusing on the most important aspect though–his actual play on the field–Montana wasn’t anything particularly spectacular, yet he wasn’t terrible neither.
Completing just six of 14 passes for 144 yards and two scores, Montana seemed to have a firm handle of the offense and handled the pressures quite well. And we also shouldn’t forget that not only is he trying to step out of his father’s shadow, but he’s also taking over for one of the more successful Green Wave QBs in some time in Ryan Griffin.
He got off to a slow start–he didn’t complete his first pass until late in the first quarter–but then he began to settle in. He seemed to develop some solid chemistry with his number one receiver, Ryan Grant, and his confidence grew on along with the game. With Tulane having some success rushing the ball, head coach Curtis Johnson didn’t have to rely on his young signal caller for anything extravagant.
Johnson expressed this while talking to the New Orleans Time-Pacayune following the game:
"“For his first game, I thought he did pretty good,” Johnson said. “We knew we wanted to run the ball. We didn’t want to have to rely on Nick the way we did with Ryan (Griffin) last year. I don’t think we have to do that with Nick.”"
In all, it was a solid learning experience to begin with and this should be a fun journey to see play out for someone of such notoriety.
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Jack is a Staff Writer for Saturday Blitz. Follow Jack on Twitter @JackJ14CFB